Author Archive
Introducing our new CMS partner
At Quba we recently completed the lengthy process of selecting a Web Content Management System to serve clients who require an enterprise level solution with the flexibility and functionality to suit their particular needs. We spent a long time evaluating a large number of systems, but ultimately one particular system matched our way of thinking [...]
You can’t please everyone
A man and his son were traveling to town with their donkey. The man rode the donkey as his son walked at the animal’s side. Before long they came across an old woman who said to the man “How selfish of you to ride that beast while your young son walks,” so the man climbed [...]
Keeping an aging population online – DIADEM
Image: Tiago Rïbeiro
Despite all the revitalised hype surrounding HTML5, web accessibility is not such a hot topic at the moment. This is disappointing to those of us who see an open and accessible web as (at the risk of over egging it a bit) crucial to the future of mankind.
So when Dr Tony Elliman, coordinator [...]
Happy birthday Firefox!
Today is Firefox’s 5th birthday so it seems an appropriate time to pay tribute to the Mozilla Foundation for the role they have played in driving the web into the 21st century. In the early naughties Microsoft was happy to sit on the monopoly of Internet Explorer and allow the web to stagnate as an [...]
How do I get my company brand onto my customer’s desktop?
It is now feasible more than ever to create desktop-like applications for the web, prime examples being online word processors such as Google Docs and Zoho Writer. But there is a simultaneous trend in the opposite direction; it is now more feasible than ever to create highly specialized, richly graphical, and fully branded online experiences [...]
Is the website of the musical artist dead?
Much has been written about the way the social networking sites are changing the music industry (e.g. 1, 2, 3), and it would be difficult to deny that the emergence of social networking has drastically altered the way that musical acts represent themselves (or get represented) on the Internet.
The World Wide Web gives artists precious [...]
How Does a Good Idea Become a Great User Experience?
You might be aware that last weekend marked the 25th anniversary of the creation of the puzzle video game Tetris. This event has given me cause to reminisce on my own experiences with the game.
I was bought a Nintendo Game Boy as a seven year old, and I played Tetris a lot in the years [...]
How Do Accessibility Issues Affect Online Business?
As the web has progressed, the level of skill and investment necessary to make content and functionality accessible to all users has increased dramatically. However, if businesses choose to ignore accessibility issues, not only will they be denying many users access to their site, they may also be denying themselves access to a signification part [...]
Beauty optional?
Recently I’ve been looking at the excellent mySociety.org network of websites in some detail, and I was struck by this sentence on their “about us” page:
Often people use the word ‘minimalism’ when describing our interfaces, and that’s not something we’d deny.
I interpret this as an admission that the mySociey.org team considers visual design to be [...]
Learn the Hare’s lesson
The Hare and the Tortoise
A HARE one day ridiculed the short feet and slow pace of the Tortoise, who replied, laughing: “Though you be swift as the wind, I will beat you in a race.” The Hare, believing her assertion to be simply impossible, assented to the proposal; and they agreed that the Fox should [...]
